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Progress

Entry 490, on 2007-03-09 at 16:16:55 (Rating 1, Computers)

When was the last time that there was genuine progress in the way users interact with computers? As far as technologies used in commercially available computers are concerned it would have been 1981 when Apple introduced the first mouse-based computer, the Lisa. Since then we have just seen refinements of the basic design, culminating in the latest versions of Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux graphical interfaces.

Touch sensitive displays have also been developed during this time, but they haven't really been successfully used in standard computer interfaces. Maybe this is about to change because Apple have used multi-touch technology in their iPhone, and rumours suggest it will also be used in future computer products.

Like most truly innovative new discoveries, the multi-touch control idea came from an academic research environment. The demonstrations of the technology which are available on the Internet are quite impressive. Of course, I haven't heard about how much hardware power is behind it, and how much it would be likely to cost to manufacture.

But we must be due for another paradigm shift in computer user interfaces. It seems that Apple are the only company who have the background of genuine innovation and the commercial influence to make this change happen. I don't think we will see this technology commercially viable in time for the release of the next range of Macs, or the next Mac OS X release, but maybe we will see it a couple of years after that.

So I think its time that we changed the form factor of laptops to be more like the Newton: there is the screen, and that's all. The screen is the keyboard, the screen is the mouse. Minor issues like keeping the screen clean can be overcome. Accurate text input is already solved on the iPhone (at least that's what they say). Having a completely configurable input mechanism should create more natural ways to interact with computers, and I hope we will see it available soon.

Comment 1 (536) by HP on 2007-03-21 at 21:25:07:

All of this technology has been around for years and it hasn't taken over the world yet. What makes you think Apple will be able to make something which is so revolutionary?

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